Spicy Christmas Trees

We have a houseful for Christmas this year, including 2 lovely people from Poland, so thought I'd try out a few family biscuit recipes from the French friend I mentioned recently. The first one is spiced Christmas trees.
G's paternal family live in Alsace, so she's grown up with the lovely spicy biscuits and bakes they make at Christmas. I'm going to try out a few and have my grandsons help me, and then they can choose their favourites [as they're going to be here for Christmas anyway].
My daughter and dog came up for the weekend, so we roped her into helping us. She loves decorating cakes and biscuits, so she helped the boys with their trees, and the photo is of her creations. The boys didn't want their efforts put on here, so they ate them!
I expect every family in Alsace has their own recipe for Christmas biscuits, but this is the translated Ruff family one, but the decoration is the boys' idea - they wanted garlands on the trees and baubles!


100g butter at room temperature
85g soft brown sugar
250g plain flour
125g honey [I used some local honey, not the runny sort]
1 tbspn rum [opt]
1 tspn lemon zest
1 tspn baking powder
1 tspn ginger
1 tspn cinnamon
2 pinches of salt
To decorate - icing sugar and silver balls.

Preheat oven 180C/gas4        Grease and flour a baking sheet.

 Cream the butter and sugar together, then add the honey, lemon zest and rum.
Beat well together.
Add the spices, baking powder and salt to the flour, then mix gently into the batter to get a nice dough.
Make into a ball and cover in clingfilm and put in the fridge for 2-4 hrs.
Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface as thinly as possible. Use a Christmas tree cutter to cut out shapes and put onto the baking tray.
Bake for 8-10 mins till lightly golden and cool on a wire rack.
Make up some thickish glace icing then pipe garlands on the cooled trees. Decorate with the silver balls to look like baubles.

 You could cut the biscuits out with any Christmas cutters and decorate them as you like. It's a good basic spiced biscuit to have in your repertoire.

Christmas biscuits

I haven't been well, so not posted on here for a while, but I have been baking. My dil is German and gave me the recipes for her Christmas biscuits and I made a selection of them.

This is the recipe for the melt-in-the-mouth vanilla crescents which are on the top layer of the cake stand.

Preheat oven 175C and grease 2 baking sheets.

200g flour

80g caster sugar

175g butter

2 egg yolks

100g ground almonds

1 tspn vanilla essence

6 tbspn vanilla sugar

Mix the flour, sugar, butter and egg yolks together then add the ground almonds and the vanilla esence.

Bring the mixture together with your hands and cut in into 4. Roll out each quarter and put in the fridge for 1/2 and hour. Cut the dough into small strips then loop each strip into a crescent.

Bake for 10 mins till light brown then roll in the vanilla sugar. Cool on a wire rack.

Christmas stars

Preheat oven 100C then 75C. Grease a baking tray lined with parchment paper.

3 egg whites

250g caster sugar

1 tbspn vanilla sugar

1 tspn cinnamon

350g ground almonds

Beat the egg whites till stiff and add the caster sugar.

Take out 3 tbspns to save for the top of the biscuits.

Mix the vanilla sugar, cinnamon and ground almonds together and add to the egg white mixture a little at a time. Make the mixture into a ball and put into a polythene bag. Roll the mixture in the bag till about 1/2 cm thick and a square shape.

Remove from bag and cut out star shapes. Brush the tops of the stars with the reserved egg white.

Put into the middle of the oevn for 15mins then turn heat down for about 30 mins. The mixture should be white, not yellow or brown - if the latter, turn the heat down. Cool on a wire rack.

Holly Christmas biscuits

This is such an easy recipe, but I like the holly decoration on the top. It's a bit fiddly to do, but I think they look Christmassy and a bit different from other Christmas biscuits. The basic biscuit recipe is one I've had for years, and I saw the holly and berries idea in a baker's shop window. I went in and bought some bread and asked about the holly biscuits and the kind lady explained how they were done. So easy, and adaptable to other designs and cutters.
The recipe makes about 12 biscuits.

75g butter
50g icing sugar
grated rind of a lemon
1 egg yolk
175g plain flour
pinch of salt

Decoration:
2 egg yolks
red and green food colouring

Preheat oven 190C/375F/gas5

Lightly grease 2 baking trays.

Beat the butter, sugar and zest together till fluffy; beat in the egg yolk and add the flour and salt. Mix to a smooth dough. Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge for about half and hour.

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to about 3mm thick, then using a 6cm cutter cut out round shapes. A good tip is to flour the cutter so it doesn't stick.

Put the biscuits onto the baking trays.
Mark the tops of the biscuits lightly with a 21/2 cm holly leaf cutter for the leaves and the tip of a 5mm plain piping nozzle for the berries. Chill again for about 10 mins till the biscuits are firm.
For the decoration - using 2 egg cups, put an egg yolk in each one and mix red colouring into one cup and green into the other. Using a small paint brush, paint the colours on the leaves and berries.

Bake for 10 - 12 mins till the biscuits start to colour round the edges.

Cool for a bit on the tray and then finish off on a wire rack.